EXPLANATION.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ovid and Riley, Henry T. (Henry Thomas)
Ulysses having stayed some time at the court of Circe, where all were immersed in luxury and indolence, begins to reflect on the degraded state to which he is reduced, and resolutely abandons so unworthy a mode of life. This resolution is here typified by the herb moly, the symbol of wisdom. His companions, changed into swine, are emblems of the condition to which a life of sensuality reduces its votaries; while the wolves, lions, and horses show that man in such a condition fails not to exhibit the various bad propensities of the brute creation. Thus was the prodigal son, mentioned in the New Testament, reduced to a level with the brutes, ‘and fain would have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.’
It is not improbable that Circe was the original from which the Eastern romancer depicted the enchantress queen Labè in the story of Beder and Giauhare in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. They were both ladies of light reputation, both fond of exercising their magical power on strangers, and in exactly the same manner: and as Ulysses successfully resisted the charms of Circe, so Beder thwarted the designs of Labè; but here the parallel ends.